Since the early fall, the US has been building up its military forces in the Caribbean and launching airstrikes on alleged drug boats, fueling speculation that it is planning a major military operation against the government of Venezuela.
And if the past few days are any indication, the situation may be reaching a tipping point.
President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the “airspace above and surrounding Venezuela” should be considered closed, though he did not explain what this meant and the US does not appear to have taken any actual steps to enforce a no-fly zone over the country. Trump said last week that the US will “very soon” begin taking action against suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers on land. Given that the US considers Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to be the head of a “narcoterrorist cartel,” this could very well include action against the Venezuelan government and military.
Trump recently spoke by phone with Maduro and, according to the Miami Herald, told him he could save himself and his family by giving up power and leaving the country. The Washington Post also reported that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth authorized a second strike to kill survivors of an initial attack on a suspected drug boat on September 2, an action legal experts say could be considered murder under the laws of armed conflict.
Trump has not yet committed to military action, but has said he believes Maduro’s “days are numbered.” It’s been a strange sort of march to war, in which some of the justifications simply don’t make much sense and the ultimate goal of the operation isn’t always clear. But how did we get here? And where might this all be headed?
What has the US military been up to in the Caribbean?
The US carried out its first strike against an alleged drug boat on September 2 in the Caribbean between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago. Since then, 20 more boats have been destroyed in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing more than 80 people, in what Hegseth has dubbed Operation Southern Spear.
At the same time, the US has been carrying out the largest military build-up in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis, including thousands of troops, advanced drones, fighter jets, guided missile destroyers and cruisers, and — most dramatically — the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford and its strike group. Special Operations helicopters have been flying missions less than a hundred miles from the Venezuelan coast. Trump has also authorized covert action by the CIA within Venezuela.
Though Trump has not sought congressional authorization for military action (and is unlikely to do so), the White House appeared to be making a case for action by designating Venezuela’s “Cartel de los Soles” as a terrorist organization and identifying Maduro as its leader. Cartel de los Soles is not, strictly speaking, a cartel. It’s a term used by Venezuelans for senior political and military leaders in Venezuela who are involved in a range of criminal activities, including drug trafficking. In other words, by the Trump administration’s logic, the Venezuelan state is itself a terrorist organization.
Is the US about to go to war with Venezuela?
At the very least, the administration wants it to look that way. The US currently has way more firepower in the Caribbean than it needs if the plan is to simply continue blowing up boats, and an aircraft carrier is not particularly suited to a counternarcotics mission — it is well-suited for an air campaign targeting Venezuela, however.
Experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) point out that the Ford is a “use it or lose it” asset — only about a third of America’s 11 aircraft carriers are at sea at any given time and demand for them is high in hot zones like the Middle East and Indo-Pacific. If the Trump administration wants to do something with all the firepower it has built up, the clock is ticking.
In some ways, the uncertainty surrounding the situation is analogous to the days prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when many political experts believed a war made little sense from Russia’s perspective, but the amount of military hardware being assembled was simply too much to deny.
On the other hand, there’s still the possibility the White House could simply continue destroying boats until it declares victory. An instructive precedent here might be the US air campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which ended with a ceasefire last spring when the Houthis agreed to stop targeting US ships — but continued firing at other ships as well as Israel. Trump has shown on this and other occasions he is willing to cut a military campaign short before it risks turning into a quagmire.
Why is this happening? What’s America’s problem with Venezuela?
Venezuela’s socialist regime has been a thorn in Washington’s side since the days of Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez, who first took power in 2000. Venezuela has opposed US influence in Latin America, and allied itself with US adversaries like Cuba, Iran, Russia, and numerous militant groups opposed to US policy.
Since 2013, when Chavez died and Maduro succeeded him, Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy has been in a tailspin, with hyperinflation and mass unemployment. Organized crime and corruption is rampant, the government has cracked down on opposition parties and civil society, and Venezuelans have become the world’s largest refugee population. Most relevant for the current crisis, Venezuela has also become a major transshipment point for Andean cocaine bound for the US, West Africa, and Europe.
During Trump’s first term as president, his administration took a variety of actions — overt and covert — to pressure Maduro to leave office. When he returned to office this year, Trump initially looked like he was going to try to have a more productive relationship with Maduro, seeking deals on detained US citizens, refugee returns, and access for US firms to Venezuela’s oil fields.
But Trump has now put a stop to those early talks and dialed up the pressure on Maduro to leave. This is likely at least partly driven by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime outspoken Maduro critic since his days in the Senate.
Maduro’s regime is undoubtedly corrupt and autocratic, but not all the US allegations hold up. The administration accuses Maduro of intentionally flooding the US with drugs and criminals, and of effectively controlling prison gangs like Tren de Aragua. While the Venezuelan government has well-documented ties to crime, Maduro is almost certainly not personally directing drug shipments. Meanwhile, Tren de Aragua, a fixation of Trump’s dating back to his presidential campaign, is almost certainly not involved in transnational trafficking. Trump has also suggested, misleadingly, that Venezuela is tied to fentanyl production.
Ultimately, different players in the Trump administration may be interested in Venezuela for different reasons, but as an emblematic country for migration, drug trafficking, and socialism, it sits within the Venn diagram of the administration’s priorities.
What could this military operation look like?
One thing we should probably not expect is an Iraq-style invasion and occupation of Venezuela.
For the moment, the US simply does not have enough ground troops in the region for that. “Invasion is not an option,” Mark Cancian, a former Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at CSIS, told Vox. Much more likely, in Cancian’s view, is an air campaign, primarily conducted with missiles fired by ships and aircraft outside the range of Venezuela’s Russian-provided air defense systems.
Since Venezuela is primarily a transshipment point for drugs rather than a producer, there’s actually less infrastructure to attack than in some other countries, but the US could still strike drug labs, airstrips used by traffickers, or the camps belonging to armed groups backed by the regime near the Colombian border.
The US could also conceivably launch strikes against the Venezuelan military, or conduct drone strikes, special operations raids, or covert actions targeting senior officials, including Maduro himself. The precedent here would be the 1989 invasion of Panama which resulted in the overthrow and arrest of dictator Manuel Noriega, who, like Maduro, had been indicted in the US on drug charges.
While many Venezuelans would be happy to see Maduro gone, and although senior figures in the country’s opposition, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, have backed Trump’s actions so far, overthrowing the regime would be risky. A US government war game conducted during Trump’s first term predicted that Maduro’s overthrow would create a power vacuum with rival military units, political factions, and armed groups fighting for control. Possibly most concerning for this administration, it could also trigger another mass migration of Venezuelan refugees.
The president’s authority to unilaterally order military action has been stretched pretty far by several administrations over the past few decades, and the Trump administration has borrowed from the rhetoric of the post-9/11 war on terrorism to justify its boat strikes. (Hegseth has described drug cartels as the “al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere.” But even by the standards of that legally murky era, its justifications are a stretch. Unlike after 9/11, Congress has not passed an authorization for the use of military force against drug cartels or the Venezuelan government. While drug addiction may be a societal scourge, there has been no incident comparable to a massive terrorist attack that could constitute an imminent threat the administration must respond to with deadly force without congressional authorization.
Historically, drug traffickers are considered criminals with due process rights, not enemy combatants. The administration may have designated “Cartel de los Soles” and other criminal groups as terrorist organizations, but that does not, in itself, authorize military action against them. It definitely does not authorize the use of deadly force against civilian ships in international waters, giving them no chance to surrender, as the US has done repeatedly over the past few weeks. Giving the survivors of a strike no chance to surrender, as the Washington Post report alleges the US military did on Hegseth’s orders, is “especially forbidden” under international law.
Trump administration lawyers have reportedly told Congress that the current legal authority, under which they are carrying out the boat strikes, does not cover strikes on land in Venezuela. However, CNN reported last month, they are seeking a separate legal opinion from the Justice Department that would allow them to carry out those strikes without going to Congress.
“What is true one day may very well not be the next,” one official told CNN — a sentence that could sum up much of this whole situation.
